


It's Only Time

by sirona



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Fluff, Growing Old Together, Husbands, M/M, Old Age, Old Married Couple, happy ever after, no seriously so much fluff, still so in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 23:06:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/627502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirona/pseuds/sirona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A morning in the Barton-Coulson household, many years hence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Only Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moonlettuce (Claire)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Claire/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [It's Only Time (Chinese Translation)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1477135) by [lzqsk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lzqsk/pseuds/lzqsk)



> Written for [moonlettuce's fandom_stocking](http://fandom-stocking.dreamwidth.org/296691.html). Huge thanks to Polly for reading this over for me and being wonderful. Title from _It's Only Time_ by The Magnetic Fields, which I feel is the theme song for these two and any other old husbands in love.  <3
> 
> ETA: now with translation in Chinese by lzqsk [here](http://lzqsk.blog100.fc2.com/blog-entry-312.html).

Phil wakes up slowly, languidly. It’s a perk of retirement, he thinks as he stretches the stiffness out of his body – or at least the kind of semi-retirement people like them get. He can’t even count how many years it has taken for him to get to this point, able to slowly stir awake instead of go from horizontal to vertical and on full alert in the blink of an eye.

He yawns and takes a deep breath. It brings with it the realization of what his subconscious must have sniffed out even as he slept – the scent of freshly brewed coffee, melted butter coming into contact with batter in a heated pan, fills the room through the door left open just a crack. He smiles, reveling in the curl of warmth in his stomach – more than a curl, really, a full-out glow of contentment he hadn’t thought would ever be possible for him, let alone freely, happily offered.

He swings his legs over the edge of the bed and levers himself upright with a grunt. Old age is no fun, especially after the abuse his working life had put his body through. His chest aches every time the weather turns, old scar prickling unpleasantly; his back is giving him more and more trouble, and don’t even get him started on his knees. Still, he bites back his complaints more often than not, because, let’s face it, it’s a miracle he’s still here at all, let alone in possession of all his faculties and as healthy as a man his age gets. People like them had no illusions about what they were signing up for with SHIELD. He’s here, not one of the countless people lost over the years, good people, good agents. Just thinking about how full his life is now, how happy, how fulfilled – pains and aches don’t have a thing on that.

He pushes his glasses onto his nose, snags his StarkPhone off his nightstand and pads down the corridor towards their kitchen, trying to tamper down the silly smile he knows stretches over his face. He turns the corner, stops in the open doorway and—stares, just for a minute, wondering how he ever got so lucky. His husband is at the stove, wielding a spatula like an offensive weapon with one hand and bringing his gallon-sized mug of coffee to his mouth with the other, taking a long sip. His back under his thin T-shirt is still as strong, still as straight and finely muscled as it always has been (Phil, in his few insecure moments, might resent him just a little for it – but not too much, because he’s the one who gets to run his hands down the slope of it, and pull him closer). His hair is more white than dark-blond now (“We go ash-blond, babe, not grey.”), and he can no longer pull 160 lbs on his bows, no matter how hard he trains every day; but in every other aspect, he remains exactly the man Phil Coulson fell in love with more than three decades ago.

Including his hearing.

“Morning,” Clint says cheerfully, although Phil could have _sworn_ he hadn’t made a single noise from his spot propping up the doorframe.

“Hi,” Phil drawls back, then gives in to temptation and crosses the distance between them to bury his face in Clint’s neck, kiss the place where it meets Clint’s shoulder.

Clint purrs in pleasure, dropping his head back onto Phil’s shoulder to give him more room to work on covering the soft skin in kisses. He only moves once it’s time to flip the crepe over, and then turns in Phil’s arms, takes Phil’s face between strong, broad palms that can break a man’s neck in a fraction of a second (but are gentle, always so ruthlessly gentle every time he puts them on Phil), and leans in, presses his lips against Phil’s like they have all the time in the world, the rest of their lives to kiss just like this (they do). Clint tastes of just-brewed black coffee, of a couple stolen crepes that Clint will later claim didn’t come out quite right, of the man Phil has spent twenty-four years waking up and falling asleep next to; of love, and adoration, and _home_. He doesn’t seem to care that Phil’s face is more wrinkles than smoothness anymore, or that the glasses that only used to come out every now and again (to extremely interesting results) are more or less a permanent fixture these days. He doesn’t seem to care that the infallible Agent Coulson now has to make lists every time he goes to the supermarket (or, really, to get anything done properly). He doesn’t care that Phil sometimes spends whole afternoons out on their patio, laptop forgotten on the small working table by the side of the chair, staring out into the forest their place backs onto and losing himself in the silence like he wouldn’t have been able to do even ten years ago. He doesn’t mind the long, long evenings when Nick comes over and the two of them spend their time arguing over SHIELD issues that Nick can’t talk about with anyone else. He just—he’s just _Clint_ , Phil’s husband, cocky and irreverent and stubborn and as direct now as he has ever been when he thinks Phil is overdoing it, or spots something Phil himself had missed.

Every now and again, when Natasha emerges from wherever she has holed herself up now that the Barton-Romanoff team is mostly retired from the field (as retired as Phil is, really, but that’s another matter for another time), she and Clint spend hours muttering darkly to each other in Russian about him, like they’ve forgotten that Russian is one of the languages Phil is fluent in. (They haven’t. They just like to be contrary, and obstinate, the them-against-the-world team Phil had stumbled onto at the start, even after they unwound enough from each other to let him in, too. In a way, it’s their way of making sure Phil knows he’s one of them, allowed to listen in, claimed as theirs. Phil stays quiet during those times, and does the dishes, or works on the new chapter of his book, or prepares the next bout of lectures as one of the SHIELD theory instructors, and smiles, and leaves them to it, and lets himself pretend that they don’t know how important those times are to him, how precious.)

“Well, good morning to _me_ ,” Clint murmurs when he breaks their kiss and pulls back in time to move the crepe from the pan and onto the pile of similarly golden layers already on the plate by the stovetop. “Sleep well?”

“The best,” Phil agrees. He always sleeps the best when it’s next to Clint.

He eyes the food, the coffee, the freshly-squeezed orange juice. “I haven’t forgotten anything, have I?” he asks, an uncomfortable twinge of doubt at the back of his increasingly reticent mind.

Clint smiles, and kisses the corner of his mouth. “No, baby,” he says easily, running his hand through what’s left of Phil’s hair, now fully white and fly-away (it makes him look like a balding dandelion in the mornings). “I just wanted to make breakfast for you.”

Phil’s heart lurches in his chest with just how _much_ he feels right now. “You didn’t have to,” he mutters. Clint already does enough, more than enough, he’s _everything_ —

Clint kisses him again. Phil wonders if it’s some Clint way of shutting off his mind (if it is, it’s working all too well). “I wanted to,” Clint says, after. “And I’m allowed to pamper my husband whenever I feel like, aren’t I? I’m pretty sure it was in the marriage contract.”

“Of course,” Phil says, placating. He knows better than to argue with Clint when he’s got that light in his eyes.

Clint grins, like he’d known what Phil’s answer would be already. Damn it, Phil is _never_ going to get tired of this man.

“There you go, then,” Clint says, horribly pleased with himself. Phil no longer has the willpower to pretend that it’s anything but endearing.

“I’ll set the table,” Phil says, starting to turn and get to it, when Clint snags his wrist and reels him back in until Phil is flush against him.

“You will sit down and stop fussing. Check your emails like I know you’re dying to and leave the rest to me.”

“I love you,” Phil says, giving up.

“I know,” Clint replies, a smile in his voice as well as on his face.

Phil rolls his eyes and steals another kiss even as the pan starts to smoke ominously behind them and Clint swears into his mouth (he doesn’t stop kissing Phil for at least another second, though, Phil notices smugly). Phil does as he’s told, and sits at the table, unfolding his StarkPhone until it turns into a tablet. He opens his mailbox.

Clint starts humming “My Funny Valentine”. Phil sighs – okay, yes, like a smitten teenager, never mind that he’s pushing eighty, because at heart he is a giant sap when it comes to Clint – and taps on a message from Nick.

_’You up? How’s your day looking?’_

Phil looks up at Clint, glowing softly in the early morning sunlight, happy and content and _there_ , still, even after everything, Phil’s to look at, and kiss, and love; and, really, there is only one response he can give.

_’It’s perfect.’_


End file.
